#227 – Did Amazon Request Proof of Insurance from You? Here’s What You Need to Know

Do you need insurance to sell on Amazon?

This is what Amazon says about the subject:

“Sellers with professional selling plans on Amazon.com must provide proof of Commercial General Liability insurance. This insurance, obtained at the seller’s expense, shall cover up to $1,000,000 per occurrence and in the aggregate and must include product liability, bodily injury, or personal injury, property damage, and other requirements as stated in the Participation Agreement. The insurance must indicate that “Amazon.com, Inc., and its affiliates and assignees” are added as additional insureds.”

If that’s a surprise to you, this is an episode that you don’t want to miss. Today on the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Chief Evangelist, Bradley Sutton speaks with two e-commerce insurance experts in order to take a deep dive into this subject.

Ashlin and Michelle both have a great deal of experience with answering general insurance questions. However, it’s their deep knowledge of the specific insurance requirements of Amazon and e-commerce that make this conversation invaluable to online sellers.  

In episode 227 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Ashlin, and Michelle discuss:

• 02:33 – From Criminal Justice to Banking and Insurance
• 05:17 – A Facebook Post Causes Her Insurance Business to Snowball
• 07:42 – The Insurance Industry Quickly Recognized the Growth on E-Commerce
• 09:32 – The Nexus of E-Com and Insurance
• 10:29 – Amazon’s Insurance Requirement Email
• 13:20 – What Type of Insurance do Amazon Sellers Need?
• 16:34 – Be Honest with Your Insurance Provider
• 18:25 – How Does E-Commerce Insurance Work?  
• 21:57 – What are the Limits of the Coverage?   
• 25:34 – Is Your Own Inventory or 3PL Covered?
• 28:45 – The Biggest Self-Insurance Fails
• 30:59 – Don’t Rely on an LLC to Shield You from Problems   
• 33:08 – “If You Want to Be a Business, Act Like a Business”
• 35:33 – How to Contact Michelle and Ashlin   

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Did you guys get that email from Amazon saying that you needed to get product insurance in the next 30 days? Thousands of sellers did. Today, we’re going to talk about what that email entails and what are the best practices for getting insurance. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon world. And we’ve got a cool episode today. The ones that have always been very popular in the past is when we have panel discussions with different people to talk about things and themes that are trending in the Amazon world. And one of those things is insurance for Amazon sellers. And we’re going to get into that in a little bit, but before we do, let’s go ahead and introduce our two guests. First of all, we’ve got Ashlin. Ashlin, how’s it going?

Ashlin: Hey, good. How are you doing?

Bradley Sutton: I’m doing just delightful. Where are you located right now?

Ashlin: I am born and raised in Indiana. So I’m here in the corn fields and soy beans.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Okay. India Hoosier here.

Ashlin: I’m a Hoosier.

Bradley Sutton: Alright. And we’ve got Michelle. Michelle, how’s it going?

Michelle: I’m doing great.

Bradley Sutton: And where are you located right now?

Michelle: I am just next door to Ashlin, I’m in Owensboro, Kentucky,

BradleySutton: Kentucky. Okay. So that explains the accent a little bit. I guess you sound like you’re from Australia, not just playing of course from the South. Very strong Southern accent. I like it.

Michelle: Yeah. That’s what you get here in Kentucky.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Cool. Now let’s get just a little bit more. I always love hearing how people arrive to the e-commerce world. The journey is always different. So, Ashlin, first of all, you said you were born and raised in Indiana now, growing up there, I think the stereotype for boys is everybody wants to play basketball or something in order to be an Indiana Hoosier. But what about you? Like you were eight, nine, 10 years old in Indiana. What was your career ambitions at that time as a young girl?

Ashlin: So I wanted to be an FBI agent at that age. I wanted to be that bad woman in the slick pants with a gun on her hip. I did get my degree in criminal justice, but didn’t use it at all. I ended up getting into the insurance field on kind of a whim. So my degree has nothing to do with what I do now.

Bradley Sutton: I mean, that’s interesting, like what you actually wanted to do even as, before you were 10 ended up what you kind of started majoring in college, not a lot– some people say I want to be an astronaut and then they kind of give that up by age 12 or something, but, okay, cool. So, you got your degree and then did you try to apply for FBI police?

Ashlin: Not really. So, I got into the banking industry and I thought that I wanted to do some like financial crimes, but then I realized that computers didn’t talk back and it was really, really boring. So I got into the management in banking and I did that for about 11 years. And then I was moving from the Chicago land area, back home to the Noblesville Indianapolis area. And one of my friends worked for an insurance company and said, Hey, come apply. I get this bonus. If you just take the interview. And I was like, I’m not interested in selling insurance. No, thank you. And she like begged me to do it. So I took the interview and the gentlemen who interviewed me said this was a man’s industry. And that those men out there would outsell me every day.

Bradley Sutton: That would be totally canceled in 2021.

Ashlin: So I said, I’ll take the job and I’ll prove you wrong. So that’s how I got into insurance. I was rookie of the year, top rep in the state, accepted my award and sent a picture and said, who can’t sell insurance now. So it was his fault, a hundred percent, if he would have just said, yeah, you have the job. I’d probably say, no, thank you. And would have walked away.

Bradley Sutton: Maybe that was part of his strategy.

Ashlin: Maybe, but it worked, it totally worked.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. And then in the beginning, what kind of insurance were you doing in the early days?

Ashlin: So at the beginning I was doing home, auto, and life insurance, a little bit of commercial. But I didn’t do the e-commerce insurance until about five years ago when one of my personal clients said that, Hey, I’m selling online. Amazon is changing these rules and I need this insurance policy. Can you help me? And I was like, nobody likes e-commerce. None of the insurance carriers know anything about you. I didn’t even know there was third party sellers on Amazon. Chris go away and he kept bugging me and bugging me. And so I finally was able to get him a policy and he came back and he’s like, Hey, I’m on this Facebook group. And there’s 13,000 of us in this group. Can I post your information? And then I was like, well, crap, that’s awesome. And it kind of just snowballed from there.`

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Let’s go back to Michelle now. Now growing up, what were your career ambitions?

Michelle: I have the ambition of being an accountant. My mom works for a nursing home and we became close with the administrator and he had an accounting degree and was very successful. And so I thought that’s what I wanted to do. So I went to college, I got my BS in accounting and met my husband. And he’s a CPA, comes from a long line of CPAs. And I thought if we ever are having a family, we both can’t be CPAs. So I took a job as an office manager at an agency here in town, and this would have been, ’94 when I graduated well, ’93, I guess. And I just was doing all of the accounting and all the commercial insurance, because I just only did commercial insurance. And then, moved up to– I was asked to come to work for a very large agency here in town and across the state and was very lucky in that and blessed and I’ve been there ever since. And so I focus only on large commercial risk until the whole e-commerce world opened up.

Bradley Sutton: This is pretty interesting. Number one, it’s very, we not only had one person, but two people who both went to college for what they thought that they wanted to do. Even at the age of eight, 10 years old or whatever, it’s kind of weird, I don’t even remember what I wanted to do when I was eight. I think I wanted to be a baseball card dealer and I didn’t even go to college. So, then there’s that. But I see a lot of similar paths, it seems, sounds like the insurance agency is maybe perhaps male dominated. Michelle just said she was only the second female to hold that position. And Ashlin was hated on a little bit by being a female. So you have very similar career paths, you start off of e-commerce and then you see that there’s this need for insurance having to deal with e-commerce. So both you kind of have ended up in this industry, is that sounds about right?

Michelle: Yeah. That that’s pretty much it, I became a seller and that’s how I got into this. I’ve always piddled around on eBay.

Bradley Sutton: As seller in Amazon are we talking about?

Michelle: Yes. And so I’ve been selling and doing e-commerce on the side for 20 years through eBay. And just because that’s just, it’s kind of a passion. I love the hunt, I guess you could say, and just go into some of the conferences and such to learn how to do Amazon. It was discovered that I actually have a full-time job as an insurance agent and it became very clear and I was asked to be on a bunch of podcasts and there was a need, there’s definitely a need for somebody that definitely understood insurance and definitely understood e-commerce as a seller. So that’s– I still have all my commercial accounts that I maintain, but I only focus now on e-commerce. And I have a passion for that. There’s not a whole lot of money in it. But I feel very, very driven to help other sellers. And that’s why I do it.

Bradley Sutton: Ashlin, what about you now that you you’ve dealt with so many Amazon sellers out there, you ever get inspired to like, man, I need you to try this Amazon thing for myself, or?

Ashlin: I’m not going to lie when I first got into the business and I was seeing some of these people come in as like three, four, $5 million in sales and you look at what they’re selling and I’m like, wow, you make that on widgets. And then I realized that the margins are so much smaller and these sellers work hard. And I personally don’t didn’t want this to be like a conflict of interest where one of our clients have to tell us what they’re selling, where they’re sourcing from things like that. So, I, from the very beginning just said, Hey, I’m not going to be a seller. And I forbid all of my employees to be sellers, but it has crossed my mind a couple of times seeing the sales that you guys do, it’s crazy. But you worked hard, really hard.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. But some people try and put this mentality. Oh yeah. That you sell on Amazon, it’s a laptop lifestyle. You just set up some products and then go to the Maldives and sip margaritas all day. That’s not how it works. And there’s a lot of ins and outs and crazy things that come up. Now, the reason why I made this episode is that a lot of people over the last few weeks, or were posting and Facebook groups and this and that because of an email that they got from Amazon. And I think the email goes something like, Hey, we’re writing to you because you need to provide proof of liability insurance, blah, blah, blah, blah. Please respond by this date. Now, you guys familiar with the email I’m talking about. Okay. So let’s, first of all talk about that. Like who, I don’t know, I don’t even check my own seller central emails. So I just realized I probably haven’t even done this, but did everybody get that email or was it just certain people?

Michelle: No, not everyone. I believe in my investigation and my conversations with Amazon individuals, not sellers, but Amazon people, you know, they started out fairly small. So, they wouldn’t be inundated with a tremendous amount of response. And in some of the smaller sellers, I haven’t had any of my bigger sellers receive it yet. And I believe in what I understand is kind of a rollout and that it’ll be amped up, in over the next several months. Is that kind of your understanding to Ashlin?

Ashlin: Yeah, so they, what we’ve heard is that the three months of consecutive sales of $10,000 or more, they’re kind of using that as a starting point. Now, all the pro sellers are required to have insurance, but it’s our understanding now that Amazon’s going to just start at that 10,000 for three consecutive months to start getting these certificates of insurance uploaded. But I really think moving forward, Amazon’s going to crack down. This is just the starting point, and they’re going to start making sure that everyone who is selling on the pro seller platform is going to have to have this insurance.

Michelle: Well it’s in the terms of service. If you’re a pro seller paying the $39 fee, then you are already without any monthly limitation required to carry insurance and provide Amazon a certificate. However, Amazon has not policed it like chewy and Walmart and the other selling platforms have.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. Th this is, this is interesting because now I’m like kind of freaking out because since I don’t pay my attention to my emails, I’m trying to see if I got that email, but I couldn’t find it right now, but it sounds like eventually everybody might get it. And I forgot who mentioned it either Ashlin or Michelle, it is in the actual terms of service there, but I just, yeah, I just don’t think that they’re policing it enough, but let’s just take a step back really quick. And this article mentions $1 million of commercial, general umbrella or excess liability insurance. Does that sound– to people, dumb people like me, that’s a different language there. So, Ashlin, can you explain just in general terms, not necessarily in regards to what Amazon is talking about here, but what does commercial general umbrella or excess liability insurance even mean?

Ashlin: Yeah. So it’s a basic policy that’s going to cover what you do or say as a business. That’s just general liability. The other thing that Michelle and I are definitely on the same page about is if you’re selling products online, not only do you need the general liability, but you need product liability too. So general liability is going to cover what you do or say as a business, product liability is going to cover what your products do to harm someone else. So if I’m selling, like an iPhone charger and the iPhone charger catches on fire and burn my house down, you’re going to want product liability also. So general liability and product liability is really what you need for selling online.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. And then now Michelle, like, so a policy, is it like for the business, is it for a brand? Is it for a seller central account? Like when you get a policy, what does it cover?

Michelle: Yeah. So it’s going to cover your legal entity. So if you have an LLC, for example, it will cover your entity across all selling platforms. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re selling in a Shopify store, eBay, Amazon, Walmart, it doesn’t matter. It follows you, it follows your legal entity. There are certain instances that if it’s a higher risk type product, those policies are written on a specified products form, which is legal terminology or insurance terminology. But you have to be very careful in those instances that your product, all of your products that you’re selling are covered and listed under that policy. So, it gets a little more complicated when you have a higher risk type product. If you’re talking babies ingestibles, pets, people are crazy about their pets and they’d go to the ends of the earth for their pets. So you have to be really careful about how the policy is written and make sure you have someone that understands e-commerce and understands product liability that’s handling your insurance.

Bradley Sutton: So, it’s not just a matter of, Hey, I’m just going to get this policy out in this company’s name. It’s like, when you set it up, it’s kind of like when you get insurance, medical insurance, they ask you about your medical history. And obviously it’s going to cost more if you’ve got cancer or whatever, heart condition. It’s similar. I’m assuming now in this Amazon space is like, if I just sell coffin shelves on Amazon, well, there’s not much that can happen with a coffin shelf. So, the insurance policy might be low, but if under my company, I’ve got 10 different brands and some of them are kitchen knives. Some of them are hoverboards with batteries that might explode. Some of them are supplements. That person is going to be paying more than the person who’s just trying to ensure his coffin shelf brand.

Ashlin: The big thing is you’ve got to be honest with when you’re filling out the application, don’t try to deceive the insurance company. So if you’re selling something high risk, like a baby item, tell your insurance agent what you’re selling, because if it is a specified product and you don’t tell them, then they’re not going to cover the losses. So just remember to always be honest and tell them what you’re actually selling.

Michelle: And to piggyback on that. In addition to that, you have audits every year. So, if you say, to get a cheap insurance policy to begin with, and you say, my sales are only a hundred thousand, but you have previous years of sells, they were 5 million each year. Then you’re going to get hit with a big audit and that’s going to come back and it’s just not going to be good for you. You’re going to have an additional premium due right off the bat at your renewals. So, being honest and upfront and disclosing the information to your agent is key in making sure you’re properly protected.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. Now, I mean, I know that, like we just said that cost and things are going to vary greatly by whatever insurance company used, by what products you’re selling, how much business you do, but let’s just take an example here. We’ll take the Project X. For those who don’t know when we say Project X, that’s the online series that Tim Jordan and I did on YouTube, you guys can type in Helium 10 Project X. We launched a couple of simple products. One was a wooden egg tray, and one was a shelf that’s shaped like a coffin and gross revenue is about a quarter of a million dollars a year. And just kind of like those two products. So, either of you, or both of you, like, what would you say, me, if that’s my account, how does it even work? What kind of fees am I looking at?

Ashlin: Do you want to take that, Michelle?

Michelle: Well, yeah, I’ll take it. Depending on which company would rate it, it’s rated different ways. If you are doing private label and that, and I assume that would be private label, then it would be in most cases rated as an importer and then adjusting the products right to the actual product exposure. So in that instance, it’s just basically based on your rights, I mean your sales, but if you are doing, and of course the higher your sales, the higher the premium, and it does matter. There’s no like minimum threshold. Like you have to have a hundred thousand in sales before you hit– it’s not, by any level amount of sales gets you to the next premium, it’s truly a per $100 of sales right. And then it’s truly just a mathematical calculation. So, and then we add, I mean, I always add on all of my policies worldwide coverage and additional a blanket additional insured because, especially, with everything being so internet based and you can have people from the UK ordering your product from the US. And if there’s a claim, you need to make sure you have coverage for that product and that claim in the UK. So you really have to have that worldwide coverage to be fully covered. And then of course the blanket additional insured is another cost, but that gives you that coverage. If you are in any sort of contract, which your terms of service is a contract, and that would extend the coverage automatically. So, it’s another kind of protection for the insurance.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. So then, like, for that sample case right there, you said it’s based on your sales. So then if I’m doing $250,000 of sales a year, what would my monthly, what is it called premium? Is that what it’s called?

Michelle: Would be premium. And it would just depend upon a lot of things, your location, some of your risk management that you’ve done. If it’s something that you need to do inspections on, or if it’s an FDA, type item and you’re doing all of what you’re supposed to be doing, then you kind of get a little bit of a break at times on the insurance. So there are so many factors that go into it. It’s not just– we don’t look at a graph or a chart and say, this is what your premium would be. It truly is individualized. If it’s something along that line, 250,000 in sales, I don’t know, a thousand dollars a year type of thing. If it’s a preferred type category and it’s not ingestible and pets and those sorts of things, you’re looking at something along that line.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Okay. That’s, I mean, that’s a good thing to know now. Now, if I have one of those policies, what does that cover? Like, first of all, in the Amazon ecosystem, what does that cover? That’s like somebody has my coffin shelf, they hang it up on the wall, it falls down and hits them on the head and they want to sue me for medical damages or what does this kind of a policy cover?

Ashlin: Yeah. So what Michelle just kind of explained is going to be your general liability and product liability is going to be your base policy. And then some of the other things that she talked about was endorsements. So your base policy is going to cover what you do or say. So let’s say you’ve got that shelf. And you say that this shelf is going to make my room look rich and they come back and say, well, it doesn’t make my room look rich. It actually makes my room look drag. That’s general liability. That’s going to cover like false advertisement and things like that. The product liability, if the shell falls down, hits you on the head, you have to go to the hospital, whatever, most policies have medical payments built in, so that would help pay those medical payments. And then your general aggregate would kick in at that million dollars. So, that’s going to help pay for your attorney to defend you from this lawsuit and then any type of damages that they say that you have to pay. So that’s really the big things that is going to be covered. Now you can always add other endorsements, which is a fancy word for like ad-ons to cover other stuff. But just to kind of piggyback on what Michelle said, that’s why you need an agent that knows e-commerce, that knows the questions to ask. Are you using your vehicle for sourcing? Are you private labeling? Are you using a 3PL all of these other questions that only somebody in the e-commerce business would know to ask to add those additional endorsements. If you just go online to some joe blow online, they’re not going to ask these types of questions. So making sure that you’ve got somebody who’s knowledgeable to ask the question, so you have the right coverages.

Michelle: Ashlin just said the third-party fulfillment, those sorts of things, you don’t really, people don’t really think about that until the bank in they’re taking out an SBA loan and the bank says, Oh, you need covers on your inventory. There’s so many things that could be– that you need coverage for. And having somebody that knows what they’re doing is so important for your business.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. And now, what if like, this obviously covers things that are happening on Amazon, but the same policy would cover if I’m selling on Etsy in my own, in my own brick and mortar or eBay, et cetera?

Ashlin: As long as you tell the agent what you’re doing. So if you don’t tell us we have a brick and mortar, or you have a brick and mortar, we wouldn’t add that to your policy. And it could be a totally different insured location. So making sure again that you’re honest, then yes, those could be covered under the same policy, as long as it’s the same business entity.

Michelle: Right. And we have what we call class codes. So we would need to add a store exposure if you’re operating your own walk in location.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Okay. Interesting. Now, going back to what you were talking about third-party warehouses, I think probably, there’s 5x, the number of people who sell on Amazon who used third party warehouses in 2020, as opposed to 2019, just because everybody, all of a sudden was forced to use them a lot more due to the inventory limitations at Amazon. So, is part of this part of this policy could be then, Hey, my inventory is now like covered at these third-party warehouses or most third party warehouses have that as, like for example, if Amazon loses something or their warehouse blows up, you know, of course they’ll cover it. I’m assuming maybe some warehouses have that too, but what does this additional insurance covering really?

Michelle: Well, it’s covering, if you have a third party fulfillment that you’re using 3PL that is not covering your inventory, that they are in care custody and control of. You’re right. If it’s an Amazon facility, fulfillment center, then it’s in their care custody control for property damage, like the big bar out in California a year or two ago. But if you have, maybe because of the inventory restrictions that you can send in, you might have a self-storage unit that you’re using to store your goods. You need to do the monthly fulfillment to replenish your inventory. Well, if you had– if there was a fire in that little strip mall, whatever you’re storing it in, then your inventory is gone and you need to make sure that you have coverage for that. And that’s where we can add that coverage to your policy.

Ashlin: And to kind of make the phone call. I insure a lot of 3PLs and the majority of them do not have coverage for other people’s products. So I would urge you, if you have a 3PL, make the phone call to your– the owner of your 3PL and say, do you have coverage for my products? And if they say, yes, ask for proof, ask for that certificate of insurance, don’t just take their word for it, because most of them do not have coverage for your products.

Michelle: And I was going to say the same thing, make sure that that third-party warehouse gives you an evidence of property, which would be covering your products on their property policy and, or point out in your agreement with him that they show, here’s the agreement here at section 3C shows that we are covering your products.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Now I would just, I’m going to make an assumption here that, I’m sure both of you deal with people who are getting their very first business type of insurance policy or Amazon insurance policy, but I’m sure also other people may be who put on their own, got their own insurance who have maybe come to you since both of you specialize in e-commerce and Amazon now, and then say, Hey, can you take a look at this and maybe see if I need to get something. So would that be an accurate assessment that also you guys have looked at? Okay, good. Because then my next question then is in your experience, I’m going to ask the both of you. What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen when you see somebody trying to get their insurance on there? Oh, I knew this was going to get a reaction. And then you’re like, Oh my God, I can’t believe that they did it.

Ashlin: Oh, let’s get started. The biggest thing that I see is people who buy it on their own and just get general liability. They don’t realize that it doesn’t have product liability. So they’ll come to me and say, Hey, Ashlin, will your policy was $700. Well, I found this online and it’s only $300. And I’m like, well, send me the copy of the policy. Let’s look at it. And it’s only general liability and that’s not going to cover if your products actually hurt someone else. So that’s like the biggest mistake that I see is if you want a $300 policy, you’re going to have $300 worth of coverage. Like don’t go chase in the cheap policy, get the right policy that’s going to cover you if there’s an issue. A $300 policy does nothing if it’s not the right coverage.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Quick break on this episode to give you my BTS of the week or of the day, I guess. Bradley’s 30 seconds. Here we go. So if you don’t have brand registry, you probably run into the one situation where if you put your brand name in the brand for a new product, it doesn’t accept it. You get this error called brand 5665. Well, we wrote a blog about how to get around that, but just some updated information is yes, you can put N/A, or NA, or TBD or something in the brand, but make sure to put your brand name in the manufacture field, under the create new listing. Because if you do that, it will accept it. And then at least until you are able to get your actual brand on your listing, that brand name, or that you put under manufacturer will actually show on the public listing. So it’s not some ugly thing that says TBD or N/A.

Bradley Sutton: Let’s see, what else would you say are our mistakes that people, you know, not necessarily people who switched to you, but just mistakes that people are making in this general topic of getting insurance for their online businesses. Ashlin, do you have any others?

Ashlin: I do, I think another couple of mistakes that people think are just not getting insurance. So they’ll come to us and say, well, I have an LLC, so I’m protected. I don’t need insurance. I don’t know if you’ve tried to like pick up the phone and dial your LLC, but you can’t do that. You can’t just call your LLC and say, Hey, I’m being sued. Will you come protect me? It just doesn’t happen. Having an LLC is great or a corporation, or however you set your business into the up is fabulous. That’s a wonderful step for a new seller, but you have to have insurance to be able to protect you and defend you from these lawsuits. That’s the biggest thing you’re going to see with these policies is that you get to pick up the phone and say, Hey, I have a claim. I’m getting pulled into a lawsuit. And as we all know, insurance companies don’t like to pay claims. So they have really darn good attorneys to get you out of these claims. So just don’t rely on having an LLC, make sure you’ve got a policy to protect you when you do get pulled into these claims.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Michelle, any others?

Michelle: I think we’ve pretty much hit on most of all the issues that we come into. I will say that sometimes we get the policies written with the wrong class codes, which is an insurance terminology again. But again, it just, it really matters. It matters if you’re doing– the rights are much reduced if you’re doing RA OA wholesale, if you’re selling another person’s brand. But if you’re white labeling, private labeling, that’s a whole different ball game and the rights are considerably higher because your name is on it. You are considered the manufacturer at that instance.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. Good to know.

Ashlin: I think one more thing Bradley, is for customers to remember that personal insurance is personal insurance and business insurance is business. We have a lot of clients that say, well, Hey, I keep inventory in my basement or in my garage, but my homeowners insurance would cover that. And that is the farthest thing from the truth, unless you can lie to your homeowner’s insurance and say, Hey, I have 10,000 toothbrushes because I like a new toothbrush every day. They’re going to know what’s for business and it’s not going to be a covered loss. So just remember your homeowners is personal and you need to have a business policy to protect your business assets.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. Cool. Cool. Now let’s, we’ve been talking about tips and strategies throughout this episode. Now, one thing we do is we have something every episode that’s called the TSS or the T S T, 30-second tip. So what is something you can say in like 30 seconds or so, or less that’s regarding insurance, that’s a highly actionable, and you think that would definitely help people. Either of you can start.

Ashlin: I think my tip would be, if you want to be a business, act like a business and protect yourself like a business, quit thinking because you sin sit behind a computer that you are untouchable. If you want to be a business, act like a business.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Good. All right, Michelle, you got one?

Michelle: Yeah. I would just say that insurance is not as scary as it sounds. Do your research, contact somebody that can help you and make sure that you’re truthful with them and get your quote. And you don’t want to be, you don’t want to get that email from Amazon and have your account, have a black mark against it. So make sure that you take the steps to protect yourself and your business.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Excellent. Excellent. Now what I’d like to do is, like I said, I haven’t even done this on my account. So we’ve got the Project X account. I need to get that up to par. And I have a bunch of case study accounts. So, maybe with each of you I’ll have one of you, hire one of you to do one account and then I’ll report back to everybody, how the process works, or maybe we can write a blog about it, but does that sound good? Like you guys are looking for– are you fully booked or can I hire you all to get me some insurance for these accounts?

Ashlin: We’re always looking for new clients.

Bradley Sutton: And speaking of that, if people want to find you guys on the inter webs and reach out to you to find more information out. Ashlin first, how can they find you?

Ashlin: Sure. The best thing to do is to go to our website, www.ecom.insure. So, ecom.insure.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Michelle?

Michelle: You can reach us a couple of different ways, but the easiest to remember is, FBAquotes.com that will redirect you to our main website, which is emford.com for our agency. And then there’s a whole e-commerce section on there.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Cool. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the show. We’re definitely going to keep in contact so I can get my accounts up to snuff. It does sound like this is something that Amazon is wanting to enforce a little bit more. So, you shouldn’t delay in looking into getting insurance for your account. So thank you so much for joining us and we’ll definitely keep in touch.

Ashlin: Thanks for having us.

Michelle: Thanks for having us.